Doing Archival Research in Political Science By Scott A. Frisch, ...

all the ways time has been wasted at work over the last year. If time can be found for these things, surely time can be found to spend in an archive, with all of the many benefits such an excursion promises, as we describe in the next section.

In short, researchers have the time; it is just a matter of how they choose to spend it. Applying Newton’s First Law of Thermodynamics, we can explain this element of resistance to archival research: an ass at rest tends to stay at rest. Political scientists are socialized to believe that some behaviors are more valuable than others. Sitting in front of a computer screen and downloading data sets from the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research—and spending time testing hypotheses with inappropriate data—is acceptable (thereby keeping the ass at rest); traveling to collect one’s own, more appropriate data is a “waste of time.”

Archival travel, actually, is a fantastically efficient use of a researcher’s time. Consider the following: A researcher travels to another city in another state, leaving his or her daily responsibilities behind. He or she works in a library—there are no cell phones, no e-mail, no pesky colleagues knocking on the door. The researcher’s full attention is devoted to research—something that probably has not been possible since graduate school, especially if one is an amiable, likeable, fun person with a social life. When the archives are closed, the researcher can spend the “down hours” tracking down leads uncovered from the research, conducting interviews, or even working on other projects. Parker has been known to crank out other, more “traditional” political science research projects while he is on the road—where he is far away from his DVD collection and Xbox.

Reason Four: Money Is Needed to Do This Research

Money and time are the two most important resources for doing archival research. Several sources of funding are available. First is the archival repository itself. Many special collections departments have travel stipends available. The Congressional Papers Roundtable